Cinders From the Sky
by P. Honoria
Summary: AHS: Freak Show. Vignettes focusing on Penny and Paul.


_A/N: Forgive this. The songs that I listened to while writing, and as such should stand for the varying segments, are:_

_David Bowie, The Heart's Filthy Lesson,_

_The Smashing Pumpkins; Pug,_

_Gary Numan; Stories,_

_and The Raveonettes' album, Pe'Ahi._

~oOo~

Night music parted from Elsa's tent, opaque, perfumed and dense. Slowly, it climbed to flood the nearby area, weighted with the transcendence of the singer's voice. _The Heart's Filthy Lesson_ was as of the very winding roots of darkness itself.

_Oh, Ramona._

Golden lights swayed above those under a tent. In unnatural colors Ma Petite danced, her long white nails facing the make-shift roof, eyes closed as another controlled the steps she placed.

From the seat abandoned by the Ferris Wheel, covered partially now by tall grass, Penny and Paul could see the encampment, but also the wilderness around them. The deep, golden hues flickering as candles between red and white.

Penny focused on the distance, the fading orange clouds,the trees tall and bare. Lingering gold in the atmosphere traveled with the fog, contrasting with the solid black branches, thin and meandering.

Under Penny's fingers, between them, was a blanket. Beneath her head was the coarseness of Paul's trouser leg. Her lips met a line of black in a pattern amid brown and she felt his hand move to her cheek.

_"Oh Paddy, I think I've lost my way,"_ Elsa could be heard from her tent, singing over the record.

o

It was dark between the trees, but Penny had seen someone enter their etched heart.

She'd seen movement from her window and against the advice of those speaking inside her, she chose to follow the summons of one she did not know. Slipping outside the caravan, she saw the world alight as lightening stuck. A ripple of bleaching properties.

Penny again found herself in the dark as she stepped forward only to be stopped by a force unseen. She turned, expecting to see a face staring back at her, but there was only the white of a spotlight, dust particles of the air seemingly floating upwards.

She stood, her eyes searching the lights, the woods, the spot where she'd seen another form of white. Arms crossed, her breath was visible. A cloud in the spotlight.

Lightening struck, and in this light she saw Paul approach. His steps slow, his figure ghostly. Music began, as though from under their feet it raised to converge in their minds. An unholy record.

He soon was behind her, his breath in her hair.

The camp, the trees, her arms and the palm of her hand, shone all in the shade of pearls. _"I am yours alone."_

o

Their movements were halting, viewed as slow-motion through Penny's eyes. Her mind dizzy, vision faintly blurred by her state; one of happiness.

Eve and Suzi were busy cooking, slicing bread. The lights glowed warmly. In Penny's hand was a glass of grape juice, which Jimmy had procured along with a few other goods from the market.

Paul was across from her, looking elsewhere, up and back to a magazine. She saw Clark Gable's teeth between his lips on a page gleaming back at her from the wrong side.

"Last night I had a dream that we lived in a glass house. We were away from all this. Away from ourselves even. Almost like we were dead and had passed on. All the bad things were gone and we were happy."

His eyes were on her now. A wind entered the tent, catching his hair. Her vision blurred again. She saw Gable now beneath her fingers, on paper. Newsprint. Colored dots making him whole.

Paul opened his mouth, breathing, thinking. Waiting for her to say more.

"I'm happy here, now."

"In our glass house?"

"In and out."

o

Into Penny's palm fell a drop of perfume. She pressed the liquid behind her ear, to her neck. Something passed the entering blue twilight, a fledgling bat, and without thinking she turned to the mirror. Her hair was in knots, a now wilting flower there from earlier. A gift from Ma Petite.

She remembered the days when she was able to line her eyes in coal, paint her lips. When it used to make a difference. The ink took that away.

_I will never see myself again. Not as I was._

She had so liked to paint her face. Color her lips red despite warnings.

Why couldn't she now? Over the false skin, over the pain, paint a picture of what once had been.

Borrowing some of Eve's cosmetics she sat in front of her mirror, forcing herself to look beyond her hate. Over her eyes she dusted brown, lining them in black. Her lips were coated in red, the red she loved, when she entered the tent in the evening to see the others.

No one said a word, except Paul who told her she was beautiful.

o

They were with another, their bodies close. The rain fell lightly in its beginning. In its morning, before growing to more. To become a threat.

Her umbrella, black, was covering them. When they reached their tent she sadly laughed, a lie in her voice, leaving her umbrella on the floor. He felt a chill come over him as he looked to her now crying eyes, her body on their bed. He twisted her wet shoes from her feet, then his own before he crawled beside her.

His eyes went to hers. He whispered, asking her what was wrong. She couldn't answer. There was nothing overtly amiss, nothing he knew of to spur her behavior. He kissed at her bent fingers, they being near his mouth. He waited in the silence for a confession.

"I thought I was pregnant... For a few days the thought's not left my mind, but today I discovered that I'm not. And at first I felt relief." She noticed Paul blink, misunderstanding her to mean she did not want his child. She quickly brushed her hands over his face, hoping that she would beyond the ability of words be able to fight his thoughts. "I didn't want a child to know this life, this misery. Now I feel guilty. I don't want to will a child away by cruel thoughts."

"If a baby's meant for us it will come," he said. "Besides, life isn't so bad here, is it?"

"No. No. You're right," she said, her mouth curving to a smile as her gaze moved to her stocking feet. She had caught his mood. "Not anywhere near as bad as where I was raised."

He withheld any comment, but his thoughts were known by her by the mischief in his eyes.

~oOo~


End file.
